


Find Your Voice

by thesometimeswarrior



Series: Flash Fic (A Collection of Drabbles, Double Drabbles, and Triple Drabbles) [22]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Episode: s01e44 Marble Madness, Friendship, Gen, Spoilers for Episode: s05e18 A Single Pale Rose, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 08:12:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16091612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: Pearl has been silenced so many times in her existence.Not today.Takes place duringMarble Madness.





	Find Your Voice

Plenty in her existence has silenced her: programmed decorum ( _you’re a Pearl, don’t speak unless spoken to_ ), paralyzing fear ( _you’re just a Pearl, who are you to fight Jaspers and Amethysts and Rubies, you’re going to get shattered!_ ), her Diamond folding her hands over her mouth ( _for my last order to you as a Diamond, please let’s never speak of this_ ), even well-meaning friends ( _Pearl, calm down! We’re still cut off. The Earth is still safe_ ). 

And, had she allowed herself the instant to think about it, obsess over it as she is so often wont to do, she’d expect to be silenced, too, by present circumstances, which is to say the realization of five thousand years of fears—the return of a Homeworld Gem to restart the colonization, which will mean another War, and last time she’d…And this time without _Rose_ to lead them (without Pink, whom the only instinct in her stronger than paralyzing fear had screamed at her to protect)…and if they lose…

But there’s no moment to think. Pearl just moves—fists clenched, back straight, eyes bearing determinedly into the Peridot on the screen, who demands to know why they keep destroying her tech.

“Because we are the Crystal Gems!” Pearl hears herself shout. “We’re still alive, and we’re still the guardians of this planet and all its living creatures!”

She won’t analyze this, won’t see it as the victory it is. And several days later, when Pearl tells Steven that sometimes he even sounds like his mother, she’ll feel so _small_ —so much like a Pearl—in the face of everything that Rose was. 

But now, underneath the Prime Kindergarten, just before they spring to attack, Garnet glances at Pearl with one eye, hears Rose’s rally cry in Pearl’s anything-but-trembling voice, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please consider leaving a review!


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